Let's just say a word about the books.
Books are not optional when you're on Operation
Mobilization.
You need to get into these books.
How many of you are thinking seriously toward
long-term missionary work?
Stand up.
Long-term missionary work.
This is a sight to be...
Everybody turn around and look.
You got to see this.
Hallelujah.
You can now sit down.
Now let me just give a prophetic word.
You are not going to make it.
Many of you are not going to make
it.
Unless you become more serious about money.
Oh, such an unspiritual statement.
There's George Behrer again.
He can't help talk about money.
He used to always talk about sex.
Now he's always talking about money.
Well, if you look in your Bible, there
are 500 verses about sex and there are
hundreds of verses about money.
Here's a book about money.
But it's in disguise because talking about money
on the front cover would make it look
unspiritual.
The title should in fact be Fundraising.
But no one is going to read a
book on fundraising.
So they changed the title.
It's called Friend Raising.
Isn't that lovely?
Friend Raising.
But if you read underneath it, you find
out what it's actually about.
Praise God, it's written by a woman.
The 90s is the decade of the women.
It's also the decade of the children.
It's also the decade of the children, which
is normal since the women do produce the
children.
So, together.
Building a missionary support team that lasts.
That lasts.
Not just little donations from your grandmother who's
going to heaven next week, but a support
team that lasts.
Wait a minute.
Somebody gave me some orientation for you, how
to speak with you as my interpreter.
I was given some orientation.
You interpret that, please.
They said I should be gentle.
Imagine telling me I should be gentle.
I'm always gentle!
Anyway, I hope you will read this book.
Because this is so basic.
To get enough money to come short term
when you're single, that is easy.
Like my friend says, that's like a walk
in the park.
But when you get married, expenses quadruple.
Because they can't stick you anymore in a
freezing tent, they have to put you in
a room!
The expenses go way up!
But don't rush into marriage just because of
that.
Because if you look into the book of
Proverbs, you will read a verse that is
very similar to this paraphrase.
Better to be in a freezing room on
your own, than a freezing tent on your
own, than a warm room with a nagging
wife.
So don't do anything foolish in the first
few days here.
There's another book along this line, which will
soon be in German and Spanish and other
languages.
And I urge you to get it, serving
as senders.
We need senders, Romans 10, 15.
There's not time to say much, because our
time is short tonight.
I just urge you to get that powerful
book if you're serious about becoming a missionary.
Some of you are looking for an English
Bible, because you are learning English.
And you can get this English study Bible
at less than half price at our literature
table.
It's a revised translation known as the New
King James.
I'd like to give every one of you
one of those Bibles.
But I have not paid for them yet.
Then there's a new book called Mentoring in
Missions.
I've had high recommendations of this book, which
I've only started to read myself.
It is outstanding.
And then a book, one year, when we
had a little more money, we gave everybody
who came to this conference a copy of
this free of charge.
It's called Love Covers.
How can people work together when there's such
different denominations?
Those who pray with their hands in the
air, moving around.
How can they be on a team with
those that pray with their hands in their
pockets or sitting on them?
How do Pentecostals work together with fighting fundies?
This book explains how.
Actually, this book explains how.
A good book is just a sermon based
on God's Word in print.
That's what a good book is.
And lastly, Calvary Road.
How many of you have read Calvary Road?
Used to be required reading.
Now some are a little concerned about the
worm theology in the early chapters.
So if after reading Calvary Road you are
feeling like a worm all wiggly in the
dirt, you can read the second book.
Because when they did this first book, some
people got extreme on this.
So Roy Hesschen wrote the second book, We
Would See Jesus, to bring it into balance.
So when the little wiggly worm sees Jesus,
he roars like a lion and he comes
into balance.
And if that doesn't work, you pick up
the book Healing for Damaged Emotions.
It's very warm in here, so I'm going
to take off my globe.
Yes, you can take off your sweater.
But I feel a burden too because you're
doing such an excellent job translating.
I'm going to present you with this global
jacket as a gift.
And since you speak so well and you're
so anointed, you can give the message and
I'll go to bed because I'm tired.
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank you for the joy and
the privilege of being here together tonight.
And we know that some are tired.
Some may be lonely.
Some are missing their mommy or daddy.
And we pray special blessing for these people.
You have called them here and you will
give them the grace to receive what you
have in these days.
We thank you for those who brought in
such a large number from places like Korea.
But we thank you for those that are
here, the ones and twos from other countries
where OM may just be getting a slow
start.
And especially, Lord, we thank you for all
the people who are here from Latin America.
And God, we know that you have answered
many, many prayers, many thousands of prayers to
bring us together like this.
Help us now as we speak together of
this subject of vision.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Many, many, many scriptures that are on my
heart.
But I'd like you first of all to
turn to Matthew chapter 9.
Matthew chapter 9 starting at verse 35.
We see something of the vision of the
Lord Jesus.
And our first burden, our first vision is
the vision to see Jesus.
I'm sure that was emphasized last night.
These Greeks came and they said, we would
see Jesus.
So let's just look at this passage about
the Lord Jesus.
And we'll just read verses 35 through verse
38.
We see Jesus was a man of action.
We'll read in English and Korean because while
she's reading Korean, all the other languages, we'd
like you to read the verses because it's
God's Word.
I'll read one verse at a time.
Matthew 9, chapter 9, verse 35.
There you're finding it.
35.
Jesus went about all the cities and villages,
teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of
the kingdom, healing every sickness and every disease
among the people.
When he saw, here's the key verse, when
he saw the multitudes, he was moved with
compassion on them because they were faint and
were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Then he said unto his disciples, a harvest
truly is plenteous, but the workers are few.
Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest and
he'll send forth workers into the harvest.
We have a vision in OM.
As you know, this has been burning in
some of our hearts for more than three
and a half decades.
And I'm so glad that without pretending, I
can say that the vision still in my
own life is an all-consuming vision that
grips me every single day, 365 days a
year.
The challenges we will give you, the teaching
we will give you in these days, it
will be impossible if you don't have a
vision.
Discipline, the disciplined life which we believe in,
without which we cannot function.
Without a vision, discipline leads to drudgery.
Now it's good to see some of you
writing some of these things down.
Because the memory is not very good at
remembering these things.
And we are not just sharing these things
so that you can hear them.
On the basis of 2 Timothy chapter 2
verse 2, we are sharing these things so
that you can receive them and give them
to others.
And I just pray that you will do
that.
Because that's part of the vision we'll talk
about just a little bit later.
Something that's so important to remember, you are
not coming to just join some large sophisticated
mission organization.
You are, as of yesterday or before, maybe
the middle of the summer, you are the
organization.
Very important to understand this.
In OM, the short-termers are not some
little extras we add because of one reason
or the other.
In OM, the short-termers are part of
the major heart of the whole movement.
Now that's a mega blessing.
But it also can be a problem.
Because though our first burden is to see
you become more mature and strong in God.
That's our first burden.
Therefore we want to give to you, we
want to share, we want to teach, we
want to love.
At the same time, we and those who've
gone before you, we have a vision.
We have a ministry that God has called
us to.
We have goals, we have purposes.
We have plans, we have dreams.
And we see you as part of that
dream.
We see our partnership, us long-termers, with
those who are short-term, that partnership is
essential for this dream to become a reality.
And so in these days we share with
you our dreams, we share with you our
visions.
Some of these visions have already become a
reality.
Things have happened.
People have been saved.
Churches have been born.
But the needs are still great.
Further training.
Consolidation.
Many, many other ministries that are connected with
any work of God.
There are many ministries.
And if you do not have spiritual discernment,
to understand the way in which God works
in the world we live, easily in a
few months from now, you might feel that
you're just being used.
Maybe to give out somebody's tracks that they've
had stuck in a box.
Or to do some dirty work in the
engine room of the ship.
There is a lot of work to be
done in OM.
We do not apologize that we are a
work-oriented movement.
Because we are attempting to evangelize the world.
Because the Word of God says we should
not be hearers only, but we should be
doers.
That's what it says in James chapter 1.
We're constantly struggling.
To do better for our Lord Jesus, who
we love.
In OM, we're in the midst of the
biggest rethink and strategic planning initiative in the
history of the movement.
You have come right in the middle of
that.
Right now, it's going on.
Long-term people, not all of them, but
a lot of them were here for four
or five days before this conference.
Thinking, planning, praying.
Asking hard questions.
Going to six different task forces, where we've
broken up major OM areas of vision and
ministry to try to improve and change this
work.
These are exciting times in OM.
You have not joined a movement that is
stuck in cement.
We don't like cement because they make monuments
out of cement, and we don't want to
be a monument.
We'd like to think of OM more as
liquid, hot steel, just dropping out of one
of the big cauldrons at a steel mill.
They have great steel mills in Korea.
And these are days of bending and molding
and forming the steel that we may be
more effective in the coming years for our
Lord Jesus Christ.
This is our vision.
This is our burden as we rush to
the year 2000.
We don't want you to just sit as
frightened observers of this that's taking place.
We invite you tonight to take ownership of
operation mobilization.
To take ownership of operation mobilization.
Now in many public companies these days, or
when companies go public from a private company
to a public company, they offer stocks, ownership
in the country.
They sell it to every Tom, Dick, and
Harry, Luigi, or who wants to buy the
stocks.
We have to be more international in our
vocabulary.
By the way, my favorite Chinese name is
wonderful.
Ping Pong.
Because it's such a good game.
Though I'm not very good at it.
We want you to take ownership.
We don't want anybody to be an observer.
Now I know some of you have come
to check out what's operation mobilization.
Maybe your mother told you about OM.
We didn't used to have such people.
And so you've come to check us out.
You're an observer.
You're going to play it cool.
You're not going to get too excited.
And you especially have been warned about Big
Mouth, Hypnotist, Verwerf, Zap.
He's liable to get you to become a
long-term missionary.
It's obvious that that isn't necessary.
Eighty percent of you are already planning.
I got to challenge some of you to
go home and make some money.
But seriously, I would beg of you in
the name of the Lord to take ownership
of this work, of this vision that God
has put upon our hearts.
What is the vision?
Some of it is seen right here in
this passage of Scripture that we have just
read.
It is the vision to carry the gospel
to every village, every people, every person in
the world.
Jesus started doing that himself when he was
here.
And of course, he backed up his actions
with his words in which he said, Go
into all the world and preach the gospel
to every person.
So clear, so simple.
That is our vision.
It's not only emphasized throughout the gospels in
very, very clear terms, but also in the
book of Acts, just before Jesus ascended into
heaven, he gave that great command and that
great promise in Acts chapter 1 and verse
8.
Please mark that down and continue to share
it the rest of your life.
Just before he ascended into heaven, just before
he ascended into heaven, he said this, But
you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit
has come upon you, and ye shall be
my witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and
the uttermost part of the earth.
But you shall receive power after the Holy
Spirit has come upon you, and ye shall
be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
and the uttermost part of the earth.
Those who do not understand this cannot understand
the Word of God.
Only through this Word, through faith, can we
understand.
Through the land forces, to way, way over
500 million people, face to face.
Statistics easily get mixed up in interpretation, so
I'll say it again.
Over 500 million individuals have received the Word
of God face to face with literature and
testimony from these OM teams these 30 some
years.
Okay.
500 million.
I'll make it easy for you.
There are about 5 billion people in the
whole world.
How do you deal with that one?
Yeah, 5 billion people.
So 500 million is 1 out of every
10 of those people.
Now that it's not really as good as
it sounds because that's 35 years a lot
of people have gone out into eternity.
Now OM is not as committed to reaching
the masses as perhaps we were in our
first 10 or 20 years.
We still have that vision.
It's still happening.
But we have other visions.
And the second part of that vision is
to see the church, living churches established in
every people's group of the world.
So after the initial sowing of the seed,
for example, as we did in France two
times over, we had to shift more of
the attention to follow-up and church planting
and discipling and training leaders.
Now OM today is part in fellowship with
the AD2000 movement.
Many, many, many millions and millions of Christians
are linked with this.
It's not an organization, you don't have to
agree with everything, but we're linked with the
general flow of the AD2000 movement.
And the slogan, the statement of this great
movement is the gospel for every person, a
church for every people by the year 2000.
That is our vision.
Now, it's the vision of many other groups.
It's the vision of many other fellowships and
many other groups.
And it should be.
And we don't want to think that we're
some special organization.
Oh, and we got more vision than these
other people do.
No.
We are learning from these other people.
Now they write me letters and they say
they're learning from us.
Praise God, we're learning from each other as
we go forward together to fulfill this great
vision.
And we know that God will lead different
people in different ways.
And that's the beauty of God's way of
working.
God is not leading everybody to be full
-time missionaries, full-time preachers in foreign countries.
God is only leading a certain number of
people that way.
But we believe He is leading everyone to
have this vision or at least a similar
biblical vision.
And as you write your letters back to
your prayer partners, back to your churches, as
you share some of this vision, remember those
words in Philippians that say that we should
esteem other people better than ourselves.
Let that grip your heart tonight.
And I want to esteem those who are
praying and giving their money.
I have to leave here on Thursday morning.
Because one of my main jobs that God's
called me to in OM is the relationship
with your churches all over the world.
And God has given me the privilege of
being bonded and linked with hundreds and hundreds
of churches all over the world.
Of course, it's taken 38 years.
And not just to those churches in terms
of the church, but to also individuals in
those churches.
I get bonded with these pastors.
We become very close.
I pray for them.
I send them books.
They write letters back.
They thank me for the books.
And they invite me or another OM speaker
to come and speak.
And then we get a chance to speak
to people like you.
How many of you are ever in an
OM meeting where you were challenged before you
came on OM?
Raise your hand.
An OM meeting where you were challenged in
your church or somewhere else.
It could be anywhere before you came.
Raise your hand so I can see.
That's about 75%.
So I'd appreciate your prayers as I spend
three days in very big meetings in Scotland.
And then two weeks in churches and Christian
colleges in the United States before returning back
to London.
This leads me to share a very big,
vital part of our vision.
Again, you'll never understand OM if you don't
understand this.
God has given us a vision of His
church.
The church is the bride of Christ.
We have, first of all, the church universal,
which is all true believers in Jesus Christ.
Whatever their denomination, that's the church universal.
But has many manifestations.
The local church, the local fellowship, is a
manifestation of that great universal church in a
particular area, among a particular people.
When people first came on OM, way back
in the 60s, many of them were recruited
in universities.
They told me later, it was on OM
they came to their first understanding of the
church and the importance of the church and
how God wants to work through the local
church and fellowship.
It changed their lives.
How many of you have been prayed for
and sent out in some way, maybe a
small way, but sent out by a local
church, whether small or big?
Raise your hand.
That is absolutely amazing.
We would not have had that 25 years
ago.
God has given us a vision of the
church.
To have that partnership with the church.
We have over a thousand churches that we
have partnership with.
We give to them, they give to us.
We visit, they send workers.
Partnership!
Wherever I go in the world, I'm often
speaking at pastor's conferences.
What a privilege!
Or leadership conferences.
And the Spirit of the Lord works in
those meetings.
And later on, many of those leaders and
those pastors have sent to us, they're young
men, they're young people, sometimes their own sons
and daughters.
How many of you have parents who are
missionaries?
Man, that's wild!
Ooh, missionary!
MKs!
Raise your hand.
Every MK and every PK can get a
free book from the book table tonight under
three pounds.
Why do I say that?
Because it's tougher to be a second generation
fool for Christ than a first generation fool
for Christ.
Because the second generation fool for Christ has
actually seen too many fools and he gets
confused.
God has given us a vision.
To see a revived church.
To see a biblical church.
To see a 1 Corinthians 13 church.
To see a witnessing church.
Where everybody in the church is winning others
to Jesus.
Where everyone in the church is committed to
one another, to love and to care and
to put into practice the biblical realities of
God's Word.
And as sometimes you go and take a
church meeting, you're asked to give your testimony.
That's a privilege.
You prepare that.
You pray about that.
You make sure you don't go too long.
And you don't have to add to your
testimony so it's more glamorous.
Some of you feel your testimony's a little
boring.
You were saved at seven on your mother's
knee when she threatened to spank you if
you didn't accept Jesus.
Just be honest when you give your testimony.
There was this young guy giving his testimony.
He was talking about the evil.
He was engaged, he was imbibed by wickedness
and evil.
He was dangerous.
He was involved in heavy sinful crime and
activity.
People were listening.
Then at eight he accepted Jesus.
Somehow it didn't quite sound right.
Be honest about your testimony.
One of the greatest commitments of OM is
our commitment to reality, integrity, and honesty.
I wonder if you could say that together
with me.
Reality, integrity, honesty.
One, two, three.
Reality, integrity, honesty.
That's the vision God has given us.
You see, it's not firstly geography.
It's not firstly geography.
It's firstly reality.
Like we heard last night knowing God.
And I will tell you, I've watched this
young man's life, Peter Maiden, for almost 20
years.
And he is practicing what he is talking
about.
He is experiencing what he is talking about.
And that's why I counted a joy to
submit to him as a co-leader.
Now, of course, we can divide these two
mega visions into many, many, many subdivisions.
We don't have the time.
Here's the vision, the specific vision for the
Muslim world.
That's a huge thing in OM's thinking and
praying.
Almost everything in OM revolves around the vision
for reaching the Muslim world with the gospel,
including both aspects of what I shared.
We have many kinds of teams.
We have many ways of going about this.
Sometimes it involves relief work and ministry among
the poor and the refugees, as among the
Afghans and the Kurds.
Other times it involves working closely with that
local church, as in Alexandria or in Pakistan,
Egypt, Alexandria, Egypt, or in Pakistan.
In the land of India, where we had
such spontaneous growth.
I believe one of the keys was this.
The right balance between working with the churches
and reaching the masses.
To keep those two parts of this vision
in balance.
And as they did that in India, we
saw the results, we saw the growth, and
we're feeling the impact of it today.
It might be good for you to understand
how some of this began.
Some of this vision, how did some of
it begin?
Did this go up?
Hello?
It's okay.
It might be good to understand a little
bit of how this began.
Dale Roton and I went to Mexico together
with one other brother in 1957.
We didn't have a huge vision of the
church.
We didn't have a huge understanding of the
local church at that time.
And then we separated for about two years.
He went to Wheaton College, which was known
for intellectual things.
I went to Moody Bible Institute, which was
known for missions, Bible, prayer, and action.
I still was concerned about mobilizing people.
I went back to Mexico with different people,
and many other things, like prayer and faith.
Dale Roton got into the Whitcliffe Bible Translator's
training.
And then he got caught up with a
group whose major emphasis was local church.
That was a big thing.
And then we met together.
He took some of my new vision.
I took some of his new vision.
We mixed it together.
One of the most amazing things in my
young life, when I challenged Dale to forget
about these tribes and Bible translation and go
to reach the masses of Turkey.
I was extreme about Turkey.
Actually, I was extreme about everything.
But especially Turkey.
And to my amazement, Dale Roton decided to
take on the ownership of this great vision
for Turkey, which continues to this day.
But a year later, he baptized me in
that little local church.
George Verwer, in the name of Jesus.
And he wrote a funny little book, which
we don't reprint.
Called Divisions in Christianity.
It was a little bit anti-denominational.
It was called Divisions in Christianity, and it
was a little bit anti-denominational.
It might have been even thought of as
anti-Presbyterian.
Since Dale Roton was a Presbyterian.
I'm too.
Yes, he was.
And he was pleading in that little booklet
for living New Testament churches.
And so the vision of the local church,
and to plant churches, and to work with
churches, came from those early days when O
.M. was just being born, and we praise
God for that.
And it's no problem for us in O
.M. If your local church keeps your ownership
as a missionary, Let your local church loan
you out to Operation Mobilization, but they can
keep the ownership.
We are very happy with that.
It's not always possible, but we're happy.
In fact, let me tell you something about
O.M. that you may not know.
We may come on a little bit strong.
We may have a strong message.
Evangelize the world.
Discipleship.
Full commitment to Jesus Christ.
But by the grace of God, you will
find the present O.M. is a grace
-awakened movement.
Hallelujah for that.
Whoo!
Would you like to join ICT?
I hope you read that book, Grace Awakening,
or at least read the back cover.
The back cover talks about grace killers.
And I believe we need to declare all
-out war against grace killers, but somehow that
doesn't sound right.
Try it in Korean.
See if it sounds any better.
Yeah.
I think we're in trouble with the translation.
I will now explain what a grace killer
is.
He is not someone who carries a machine
gun.
I'll explain what a grace killer is.
He's a legalist.
A legalist.
Do you have a word for that?
In the name of Jesus.
It's okay.
It's not Presbyterian.
Do not get them confused.
Basically, it's someone that is living by rules
and regulations instead of by the grace of
God and the power and the reality of
the Holy Spirit.
And if you'll give us a chance, if
you'll talk to us, you will discover we
are more flexible in OM than you may
have ever dreamed.
But you need wisdom on how you put
your leader to a test in regard to
his flexibility.
You may want to wait for a few
weeks to pass when the pressure of this
conference goes away.
And then maybe share with him some of
the things that are on your heart that
you'd like to see changed or that you'd
like to do.
But let me quickly share a few other
aspects of this vision that is so much
upon our heart.
Other geographical visions.
Basically, it's the whole of Europe.
Basically, it's the whole of India and those
surrounding countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan.
And because of this vision for the church,
and the desire to reach tens of millions
of people with the gospel, we feel that
the vision extends to every nation in the
world.
We don't feel we should have OM permanent
bases in every nation.
That would be foolishness.
We're already overextended.
But with the ships, we can come in
for a season with a catalyst, with literature,
with conferences, and tremendous things take place.
And sometimes people come from those nations and
they go back and they start all kinds
of different ministries.
So we have to confess our vision is
a world vision.
Jimmy?
You're going to pray for every country?
Yeah, why not?
I remember when I was a little kid,
I was a baseball fanatic.
Baseball.
And if you're from England, that's similar to
cricket.
It's cricket's little cousin, little cousin, that went
to America and go bigger and bigger and
bigger.
Of course, a lot of...
An explanation, what happened.
Because they don't know what the cricket is.
They don't know what cricket is in Korea.
Can you imagine?
They know baseball.
Didn't the Americans teach you cricket?
I don't think so.
But it's amazing when you're into these sports,
how many of these players you can memorize
their batting averages or memorize something else about
them.
Hundreds of players you can remember something.
You can pray for every nation.
Not all on the same day.
But make a commitment to pray through Operation
World in one year, a whole year, and
you'll touch every nation in the world with
your own prayer life.
That is exciting.
That's the vision we read about in Matthew
chapter 9.
For Matthew 9, verse 38 says, Pray there
for the Lord of the harvest.
He'll send out workers into the harvest, and
I don't believe we should leave out any
field.
That's why whatever field God is leading you
to, you can only go to one place
at a time.
Except, of course, on the ships.
You go on the ship, and then you
go to 15 different places.
If you think you're confused in the beginning
of the OM year, join the ships and
see how confused you'll be at the end
of the year.
Yeah, that's a little too long, right?
Let's try that again.
If you join the ship, you go to
many different ports.
But you can pray for the other countries.
And I hope we will be praying for
one another.
Because the vision of OM is the vision
of prayer.
Some years ago, when I was speaking to
the leaders here in this very room, I
gave a message called, Little Visions.
Because you see, in OM, there are so
many big visions.
There are so many big plans.
It's just bizarre.
Especially if you fellowship with people like Howard
Norrish.
Have any of you met Howard Norrish?
Mr. Memo Howard Norrish.
He has so many visions.
And as I meet these different OM leaders,
they've got dreams, they've got visions.
We've got ships.
But some leaders are not satisfied.
We now have a leader who's got an
airplane.
I won't tell you who it is.
Just the leader of the work in South
Africa.
So I'm down in South Africa a few
weeks ago.
God is doing amazing things there.
And I discover the work has changed there.
They don't talk about South Africa anymore.
They talk about Southern Africa.
The vision gets bigger and bigger every time
I go down there.
And I was doing some questioning.
Where is this Southern Africa?
Where does that end?
I was thinking Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe.
Well, praise the Lord, a little crossing of
the borders.
I have my map here.
As you can see, Africa is a very
big place.
This map is a proper proportion map that
brings Africa into the right size.
Everybody should have one of these maps.
Look at this.
And I found out that Southern Africa, in
the minds of some mega-visionaries, is everything
south of the equator.
As we can see, Southern Africa is getting
bigger and bigger every year.
It's going up to the equator.
Maybe it will go up to the Mediterranean.
In fact, half of the world has that
vision.
Because they know that I was the man
behind the ship vision.
What's my next thing?
A gospel train?
Choo-choo for Jesus.
Somebody thought I was going to get a
submarine for evangelism in depth.
Seriously, I had a letter asking when I
was going to buy my first jumbo jet.
I get amazing letters.
Somebody wrote me and said, I believe the
solution to the fuel problem with the ship
is to go nuclear.
I sometimes wonder what people are drinking in
the communion services.
I told a brother the other day that
my vision is to somehow get behind my
younger men and women leaders and their vision
and help see their vision fulfilled for the
glory of God.
That's where I am in 1993.
So relax, some of you are looking tense.
And you're going to hear about a lot
of this this week.
And you're going to feel overwhelmed.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk on how to
make a decision.
This is an exciting message tomorrow morning.
I guarantee when you hear me speak on
how to make a decision, you will be
more confused than ever before in your Christian
life.
And that's normal when you first come into
a whole new fellowship like this.
It is normal to be shaken.
It is normal to be intimidated.
If I were a young Christian, go back
to when I was 17 and I came
into this place, you know what my problem
would be?
It wouldn't be the confusion about all the
different countries.
Where am I going, England?
Where am I going, France?
Is it Fritz Schuller?
Is it Dale Roton?
Lord, where am I going to go?
That wouldn't be my problem if I came
here as a young Christian.
My problem is that within the first two
days here, I would be in love with
at least 20 different girls and crying out
to God for mercy.
If you don't have that problem, praise God,
you're much more mature in your faith than
I was in my faith.
If you don't have that problem, praise God.
What I'm trying to say as I bring
this to a close, by the way, in
my messages, that means 25 minutes to go.
God, I want you to relax.
And as it says in 1 Peter 5,
7, cast every care upon God because He
cares for you.
And even if you make a mistake, God
is bigger than that mistake.
I make mistakes.
Simple mistakes.
It's so embarrassing.
I was in a country not long ago,
I was in a hurry.
I think it was an airport.
Simple little thing I had to do.
I've been doing it since I was a
little kid.
Go to the toilet?
It's not difficult.
But I rushed into the room that was
marked ladies.
If you're ever feeling bored on a particular
day, just try that experience.
I guarantee you will experience repentance and renewal.
Of course, fortunately in that situation, I could
run right out again.
I'm glad that you know how to laugh
because you've come into a movement that is
very human.
Yes, you've come into a movement with a
great vision.
But also a great sense of our own
weakness.
A great sense of our own humanity, our
own weakness.
And we're wanting more of this grace awakening.
We're not wanting those people that A.W.
Tozer talked about who become religiously jumpy, religiously
uptight.
Because God sees their every action.
And they have a wrong concept of God.
They think he has a big stick ready
to pop you on the head when you
do something wrong.
Wrong.
We want you to sense the freedom that
we have in Jesus Christ.
We're all different.
We're all struggling.
I've had struggles every day since I came
to this conference 10 days ago.
Different battles and struggles and emotions as I
just try to live day by day for
Jesus.
It's not easy what you have decided to
do for this year.
Though it's easier for some than for others.
And our vision is you.
We want to serve you.
We, if necessary, want to lay down our
lives for you.
We want to get to know you.
That's much more difficult today in a movement
of 2,200 adults than it was in
1962 with a couple hundred people in the
whole movement.
Pray that you will be patient with the
leaders who are attempting to mentor you and
help you and serve you in these days.
So this, that's our vision.
The gospel to every person in the world.
The church.
The church revived and evangelizing and obedient and
loving.
And you, growing spiritually, growing strong in God,
learning how to find God's will, learning the
many, many principles we'll be teaching all during
these days, some of which you have already
heard.
And in any conference like this, there is
always straw together with the wheat.
There's always some straw together with the wheat.
You know, in the Bible, the straw, you
throw that away and the wheat you make
into bread and you eat that.
So when we preach, some of the things
we say, they're not that valuable.
It's straw.
You can throw it away.
And some of the things we say, that's
what you need to eat.
It's from the Word.
It's good.
And it's a beautiful thing.
Welcome to Operation Mobilization.
Fasten your seatbelts.
We're all going first class.
And there will be many extra bonuses and
surprises, not just a little crummy pair of
free airline socks.
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank you for your Word.
We thank you for the reality of prayer.
We thank you that you answer prayer.
We're here together because you answer prayer.
You brought in the money to bring us
here.
You caused your church to send us out,
most of us, sent out from our churches.
Lord, you're leading us in the direction that
we should go and you will confirm that
through other people in the next few days.
We thank you for all you've done in
the last three and a half decades.
But we're believing you for a new day.
A greater vision.
Greater reality.
Greater breakthroughs.
In these many different parts of the world.
And Lord, we'll just give you all the
glory.
We give you all the praise.
Let's just take a few moments for silent
prayer.
So often we have so many words, so
many words coming at us.
And that's biblical.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The Bible's a book full of words.
It's good to just be silent.
I want you to take the ownership of
this vision in its simplicity.
In order to share this in many languages
tonight, we've been forced to be even more
simple.
I want you to take this vision in
its simplicity.
I want you to take ownership.
I want you to turn away from just
thinking you're joining some organization.
I want you to, by faith, be bonded
into a fellowship to take ownership of a
vision.
Would you do that?
Your own heart.
Take a few moments for silent prayer.